148 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Duhlin Society. 



red cattle which were horued. From this cross yellow' coloured polled cattle 

 were bom, and from subsequent crosses red polled cattle. By persistently 

 breeding from the red polled stock thus produced, the Suffolk breeders carried 

 their cattle through a yellow stage to the final red of the present day. At 

 the same time, by crossing with the hornless Suffolk Duns, the Norfolk horned 

 cattle lost their horns. The two breeds are now one. 



Yorkshire. — The " Northern or Yorksliire Polled Cattle " never seem to 

 have occupied an extensive territory. Tuke, in his " Agriculture of the 

 North Eliding of Yorkshire," published in 1800, says that " Henry Peirse, 

 Esq., of Bedale, has a breed of very large hornless cattle," and he publishes a 

 drawing of a " polled Teeswater cow belonging to Richard Raisen, Bishop- 

 thorpe"; but the centre of the breed seems to have been in the East Riding, 

 most likely in Holderness. John Lawrence describes them in 1805' : — 

 " These have the same qualities as the short-horned cattle, carrying vast 

 svxbstance, and some I have seen lately are of great size, although in that 

 particular they are most conveniently various. In my opinion, they are a 

 most excellent breed, and well merit improvement, with the view of labour, 

 by a selection of the finest-boned and most active individuals. From the 

 shape of these polled cattle, they hold a strict affinity in all respects with the 

 short-horned' amongst which they are found ; and it seems that various 

 breeds of cattle are attended with hornless but pefectly congenial varieties. 

 The above, for example, and the polled galloways of Scotland, of similar 

 shape and quality with the long horns, also the Devon uatts, or polled cattle 

 on the coast." In Strickland's "Agriculture of the East Riding of York- 

 shire," published in 1812, we are told that the "Original Holderness breed 

 ... is distinctly marked by its colour, being variously blotched with large 

 well-defined patches of deep red or clear black, in some families of dun or 

 mouse-colour on a clean white ground ; they are never of a brindled or 

 mixed, and rarely of one uniform colour." Here again, as with Sir Thomas 

 Beevor's Suffolks, the dun colour is evidence of a light dun ancestry. 

 Another matter of importance, as will be seen when Aberdeenshire cattle are 

 dealt with, is Lawrence's statement that these Yorkshire cattle were "most 

 conveniently various " in size. 



At tlie end of his cha;pter on polled cattle, and immediately after 

 referring to those of Yorkshire and Devon, Youatt* draws attention to 

 another point of some importance : " Many breeders pay particular attention 



1 See Eoy. Dublin Soc. Proc, vol. xii.. No. viii., 1909 : " The Colours of Highland Cattle." 



2 '■ General Treatise on Cattle," &c., p. 71. ^ i.e. of 1805. 

 * "Cattle," 1834, p. 179. 



